Irish Life & Permanent Group Holdings Plc (Financial Management)

Whether or not the global downturn is over, one should attest to the fact that the world economy is rapidly changing. And the banking sector is currently focused on adapting to the changed market environment. Irish Life & Permanent Group Holdings plc is being known as one of the leading providers of personal financial services in the Irish market. This paper has been compiled to bring a clear and an unbiased view of the company’s key strengths and weaknesses and the potential opportunities and threats. On the basis of comprehensive environmental analysis of Irish Life & Permanent, an in-depth strategic analysis of the company’s businesses and operations is provided and elaborates further strategic choices for the company.

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COMPANY

Irish life and permanent group holdings PLC (ILPGH) is one of Ireland’s largest companies within personal financial services sector, focusing specifically on retail banking, insurance and investment services. Irish Life and Permanent is the result of merger between Irish Life Assurance and the Irish Permanent Building Society, which took place in 1999. To drive change in this merger, Irish Life Assurance & Permanent pursued a centralized IT infrastructure strategy, which ensure the group IT function provide infrastructure and IT support to each of the individual business units. However, instead of anticipated cost savings the IT function get distracted by data centre consolidation and system integration, and lose sight of the quality of service it provided to business ‘customers’. In order to address augmenting customer dissatisfaction, Irish Life Assurance & Permanent executives launched a service management strategy. This strategy has brought fruitful results, but unlike their main competitors, Irish Life Assurance & Permanent did not spend bailout capital from the government in full swing of financial crisis in 2008. Now Irish Life Assurance & Permanent has over one million customers in its home country and annual revenues of around €880 million (Group Strategy) The group offers its retail banking services under the Permanent TSB brand, life assurance and pension services under the Irish Life Assurance brand, fund management under the Irish Life Investment Managers brand, and general insurance through its associate company, Allianz. The group is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

(See Appendix 1 for history of individual company)

THE STRATEGIC POSITION OF THE COMPANY

THE MACRO-ENVIRONMENT

In order to analyse the macro-environment Irish Life Assurance & Permanent operates in, it is essential to make a PESTEL analysis. It helps to figure out and estimate the main factors in Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal spheres which have the crucial impact on the company’s operations as a whole but are out of their direct control. Since the personal financing sector is very much influenced by changes taking place in the world and has undergone rapid and dramatic changes during the last decades, this analysis is especially important for Irish Life Assurance & Permanent.

POLITICAL

In 2006, the Irish Government established a not-for-profit company, the Social Finance Foundation (limited by guarantee and having no share capital) to act as a wholesale supplier of funding for social finance. Therefore, it is expected more projects at community level and more micro-enterprises benefiting from the support of the Foundation over the coming years (Social Finance Foundation, 2010).

In September 2008, The Government Guarantee Scheme was introduced, which requires the institutions concerned to work with the Irish Banking Federation to submit bi-annual reports on goals and targets set down in relation to the delivery of the National Payments Strategy, which will help regulate financial market and pull this sector out of downturn (Third Report on Corporate Social Responsibility, 2010).

...The Project Management Process Groups
The Project Management Process is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. It is a set of interrelated action and activities performed to achieve a pre-specified product, result, or service. The Project Management Process is grouped into five categories which are:
The Initiating Process Group involves the processes, activities, and skills needed to effectively define the beginning of a project. Setting all permits, authorizations, and initial work order in place to secure an effective and logical progression of initial project activities sets the stage for subsequent success throughout all phases. Setting clear phases for work to be completed, initializing teams, and having the budget in place before work begins are vital for a strong start to any project across industry. The Initiating Process Group involves these main interrelated components: developing a project charter and identifying stakeholders.
The Planning Process Group sets forth the processes needed to define the scope of the project, set strategic plans in place to maximize work flow, and begin to assemble priority lists and plan team needs. This process group also addresses a more narrow clarification of all project goals and expectations and puts in place the project...

...Career preferences and the factors influencing their selection in fourth year medical students in the University of Colombo
H D Tennakoon, A K Vidanapathirana, S Sutharsan
AL 1999 batch of students, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo
Abstract
Objective: To identify post intern career preferences and factors influencing their selection in fourth year medical students of the University of Colombo.
Design and setting: A descriptive cross sectional study was carried out among 200 fourth year medical students of the AL 99 batch of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo from 20th May 2005 to 11th July 2005. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Data analysis was done using Microsoft Excel and SPSS software programs.
Results: According to the level of preference scores computed for each career preference, General Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, General Practice/Family Medicine, General Surgery and Neurology were areas/disciplines with the highest levels of preference among students. Community Medicine, Biochemistry, Geriatrics, Medical Administration and Microbiology had the lowest preference scores. Among factors which influenced the career preferences, personal factors scored the highest percentage score (35.03%), followed by factors within the hospital and clinical appointment (36.33%), occupational factors (29.5%), factors within the medical school (20.84%) and factors associated with family and relatives(7.6%)....

...﻿SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI COLLEGE
045 Admiral Village, Talon III, Las Piñas City
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
Course Code: EDMA 534
Course Title: Financal Management
Professor: Dr. Alfred Orosco
Submitted by: Marilou T. Buenaventura
MODULE 2 for FINANCIALMANAGEMENT IN SCHOOLS
1. What general advice would you give to a new school head regarding strategy and planning the finances of a school?
Schoolhead has an authority, responsibility and accountability to set the vision/mission, goals and targets of the school in collaboration with his/her staff and teachers. He/she accountable for higher learning outcomes, administer and manage personnel, physical and fiscal resources of the school. This scope os translated into 3 major functions as defined by Sec. 7 of RA 9155: (1) promote education quality improvements, (2) exercise administrative management and (3) exercise instructional leadership. With these functions, an Action Plan/Work Planon Financial Requirements of the school is very necessary setting the priorities and needs of the school for the year-round implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
2. What advise can you give a new school head linking the spending to the school development plan?
Each schoolhead must know that there are 7 phases to follow the cycle in his/her exercise of administrative management: (1) planning, (2) mobilizing, (3) programming, (4) budgeting, (5)...

...
Course: Executive Master Program in Business Administration.
Duration: 1 Year
Semester I – FinancialManagement
Section A
Part One
Multiple choices:
Q1. a. Ignored non-corporate enterprise
Q2. c. Redeemable preference shares
Q3. b. Domestic risk
Q4. a. Future cost
Q5. c. Designing optimal corporate structure
Q6. d. Cost of capital
Q7. d. Agency cost
Q8. a. Legal requirement
Q9. b. Default risk
Q10. a. Beta
Part Two
Q1. Annuity is fixed sum of money paid every year in at any other fixed interval shorter than a year. This annuity may be way of return of some principal plus interest payment of against money invested or by way of payment of other dues such as pensions after retirement. In any case it represents out flow of cash from one account to in flow of cash to another account. In this way all annuities involve movements of cash or funds. Therefore all annuities are cash flows that can be suitable represented in cash flow statements. An annuity will be represented as inflow of cash in the cash flow statement for the recipient of annuity and out flow of cash in the cash flow statement of the person or firm paying out the annuity.
Q2. Portfolio risk refers to the combined risk attached to all of the securities within the investment portfolio of an individual. This risk is generally unavoidable because there is a modicum of risk involved in any type of investment, even if it is extremely...

...managing money. It includes financial service and financial instruments. Finance also is referred as the provision of money at the time when it is needed. Finance function is the procurement of funds and their effective utilization in business concerns. The concept of finance includes capital, funds, money, and amount. But each word is having unique meaning. Studying and understanding the concept of finance become an important part of the business concern.
Financialmanagement is an integral part of overall management. It is concerned with the duties of the financial managers in the business firm. The term financialmanagement has been defined by Solomon (2004) “It is concerned with the efficient use of an important economic resource namely, capital funds”. The most popular and acceptable definition of financialmanagement as given by S.C. Kuchal (2006) is that FinancialManagement deals with procurement of funds and their effective utilization in the business”. Howard and Upton (2003) Financialmanagement “as an application of general managerial principles to the area of financial decision-making. Weston and Brigham (2003) Financialmanagement “is an area of financial decision-making, harmonizing individual motives and...

...﻿Financialmanagement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
FinancialManagement means the efficient and effective management of money (funds) in such a manner as to accomplish the objectives of the organization. It is the specialized function directly associated with the top management. The significance of this function is not only seen in the 'Line' but also in the capacity of 'Staff' in overall administration of a company. It has been defined differently by different experts in the field.
It includes how to raise the capital, how to allocate it i.e. capital budgeting. Not only about long term budgeting but also how to allocate the short term resources like current assets. It also deals with the dividend policies of the share holders.
Definitions of FinancialManagement[edit]
“FinancialManagement is the Operational Activity of a business that is responsible for obtaining and effectively utilizing the funds necessary for efficient operation.” by Joseph Massie
“Business finance deals primarily with rising administering and disbursing funds by privately owned business units operating in non-financial fields of industry.” – by Prather and Wert
“FinancialManagement is an area of financial decision making, harmonizing individual motives and enterprise goals.” By Weston and...

...Introduction
Choosing the topic and organisation:
The topic area I have selected for my project work is the “Business and Financial Performance of an Organization” over the past three years and I took the privilege to consider Crawshaw GroupPLC for my project. It is a UK company.
To select Crawshaw GroupPLC as the company for the project was not an easy task. I first tried comparing newspapers and the articles in search for the top most companies to select but in every sector of the market there stands a market leader. While evaluating different companies, Crawshaw GroupPLC impressed me a lot and I then decided to go ahead with Crawshaw.
I further compare its performance with its competitor “Greggs PLC” which is also a UK company.
Reasons for choosing the company:
Crawshaw is one of the leading organizations in the UK and hence have expanded all over the world, adding more countries to its portfolio year by year. The company’s activity which provides the most of its revenue is food retailing.
Crawshaw’s states, “The Company will create new brands to improve its products and appeal to aspirational consumers around the world”
And back in January 2005 The Guardian published its report saying “£1 in every £8 of UK consumers is taken up by Crawshaw”. The report proves the company has the potential and knowledge of its customers.
As exciting...